I found myself reaching toward her to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
At the moment that I touched her, the feeling in the air drew all together and flowed out of her shoulder and up my arm and back down again. Her tension—one kind of tension, at any rate—released with a slight sigh, and I felt her almost imperceptibly soften and move toward me.
I dropped my hand. There was more there than I had anticipated or understood, and I froze, feeling awkward. Teresa kept her eyes on mine, her face tilted up, the emotions she was feeling as visible as clouds drifting across the sky: now one, then another and another, some far apart, some so close they overlapped in their passing.
I’m not sure which of us moved, or if both of us did, but our bodies were touching. Then our lips touched. Just a touch.
“I’m married,” I stuttered, moving back. Immediately after I heard the sound of my own voice, I worried that I was presuming too much, that maybe what I thought I saw in those drifting clouds was the devil’s whispers in my own mind. I know that he’s always around, waiting for my return.
“I saw the ring,” she said calmly, the connections closing down and her emotions going back behind the hiding place of the face that’s proper to wear in public.
“I didn’t mean to imply that you . . . ”
She shook her head, that she wasn’t offended and maybe that she wasn’t denying that my defensive reaction had cause. “I’m . . . in something of a state . . . , ” she said in her own confusion, “. . . emotionally. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“No,” I said. “Your husband just died.”
We hadn’t moved. We were still so close that with the slightest gesture we could fall into each other, arms around each other, body pressed against body, and her hands, like mine, seemed poised at her sides as if they knew where they wanted to go but didn’t know how to get there.
“We better . . . , ” I said, stepping back, “um . . . sweep this up. I’ll help you.”
I bent down and started picking up the pieces, the bigger ones. I still had to ask her questions. I threw ceramic chunks in the trash and retreated back to the living room. I sat and busied myself with my notes but wrote down nothing about how her eyes looked gazing into mine or her lips had been full and moist.
Teresa and Nate had been married five years. Her first, his second. They’d been separated for six months. It was, she claimed, by mutual and satisfactory agreement. Her attitude declaimed that she was a very modern woman who knew that such things happened, and she could cope very well.
I had only seen pictures of Nathaniel MacLeod as a corpse. Dying had not made him happy. Living, apparently had. Alive, he had thrived in front of the camera. He was smiling, exuberant, clowning, involved. He talked, he hosted barbecues, he hiked, waved, and liked to put an arm around one person or both arms around two, three, or four people. He had a big mustache, most of his hair, and a fair-sized belly on a large frame.
“Was he always happy?” I asked.
“Nobody is always happy,” she said, cool and adult, then added, with feeling, “but he was alive.”
“But lately, being separated and all, was he happy?”
“Oh yes, happier than ever.”
“Oh?” I said.
“Listen, I met Nate eighteen years ago. We had a brief thing. It was fun, but we both moved on. No hard feelings. Then I came out here. The geography department is growing. There are a lot of issues in the Southwest: rapid development, suburban sprawl, water usage, the border.
“He was already here and we ran into each other, and bam, it was off to bed. We were pretty fabulous. Better even than when we were younger. I’d learned a lot, a lot, in the intervening years . . . but it was great.” That was all said in a very straight and informative way, as if she were simply trying to explain their relationship. But even in her circles, however liberal and liberated they were, those were not the sort of things a woman says to a man unless she has reasons to want him to know how sexual she can be. “And we loved each other. One of us mentioned marriage, I don’t remember who, and then it was like . . . like Kinky Friedman running for governor of Texas: ‘How hard can it be?’ and ‘Why the hell not?’”
“It was good,” she said, “but, you know, maybe good’s not enough. It wasn’t . . . fate. And we didn’t have children. Frankly, it’s hard to tell the difference between married, living together, or boyfriend and girlfriend if you don’t have children. It’s just an agreement.
“But to do what?” she asked.
She had taken out a second teapot, a more pedestrian one, simple and round with a smooth fiestaware glaze, a southwestern green. The leaves had been steeping while we spoke, and now she decided it had been long enough and poured out cups for each of us.
“If we’d had children . . . , ” she said. “But we didn’t, and things can only burn at white heat for a few years. Even with tricks and toys and . . . exploring the boundaries, like everyone does nowadays. Then the stupid things that don’t matter eventually begin to matter. I like tennis. He liked hiking and long, long bike trips. He liked to bait dinner guests and get them into arguments, and he was very sharp, very quick, and he could decimate them. But it embarrassed me. And it got confusing. If I slept with someone, was it because I really wanted to, or was I being competitive? What if I felt emotional? What if he did? And all of that.”
I sipped at the hot tea. Of course the marriage had failed. I could hear the sermon in my ears: this is what atheistic, secular humanism led to. Where had the sacred gone? Without it, there was nothing. She was explaining it all quite clearly, but she was unable to hear what she herself was saying.
“So, it was over,” she said.
“He moved out?”
“Yes. He got an apartment.”
“Listen, I’ve been divorced,” I said. “A couple of times. And I have to tell you, it was difficult. Lot of anger. Lot of depression, confusion. I felt lost.”
“No,” she said. “Our marriage wasn’t like clinging onto a life preserver. I mean, I had lunch with him, two days before . . . before he died.
“He was so happy. He’d just finished his book. He was really excited about it. He said that with the jihadists on one side and the Republican Party as the party of the Christian God on the other side, the world was ready to hear something that explained the madness. People were ready to hear what he had to say. He even thought he could get a popular publisher, not just a university press.”
“I’m going to . . . I want to see to it that it’s published,” she said. “I want to do that for him. He had good ideas. They deserve to be heard.”
“Maybe he got turned down. Maybe he couldn’t get a publisher.”
“No, it was too soon. I don’t think he’d even sent it out yet,” she said. “Plus, he had that new girlfriend. He was having a good time. He was not suicidal. Not at all. That’s why I raised such a fuss. I demanded an independent investigation. The university even agreed to hire an outside expert, an independent crime scene analyst. CSI, like on TV. They were just doing it to placate me, but it was going to be done. He was not suicidal.”
All free and open and happy, happy, happy.
I didn’t buy it. I never had an ex tell me about her new love unless she wanted to hurt me. Or pick a fight, which is the same thing. Nor did I ever find an ex eager for me to say how, after our bed had grown cold and old and stale, I’d found someone who would make it bubbly, fresh, and fun. Maybe that’s why she was coming on to me so strong. To get some of herself back, to show she could still compete, even on a campus of new, young treats, eagerly testing out how it was to be away from home. “Really?” I said, “so he told you he had a new girlfriend?”
“He didn’t actually say it that way.”
“Oh.”
“He was talking about a girl in one of his classes. His own special angel who was ‘so bright,’ she understood ‘how philosophy makes the real difference in peoples’ lives.’ All that gushing about understanding eac
h other’s ideas. It’s the mating call of people who read.”
10
“I don’t think you should work for a terrorist,” my wife said.
Gwen didn’t yell but it sort of blurted out of her, like she’d been sitting on it all day, or for several days, and it had grown and now it was pecking its way out of its shell, poking its head out and cheeping.
“It’s my job,” I said.
“Not to work for terrorists,” she said. Cheep-cheep.
“No, my job is to take investigative assignments from attorneys or sometimes other people, and sometimes they’re bad people. Many times they’re bad people, but that’s not my call. My call is to do the job, find the facts, and let other people act on them.”
“I think it’s wrong. We’re all at risk here.”
“Look,” I said jovially, I hoped, “I’m the hunter gatherer, you’re the cave keeper. That’s how God organized it. So, you don’t tell me not to hunt the big bison, and I don’t tell you how to keep the home. We have our places, and knowing them and keeping them is what keeps us happy.” That was practically verbatim from the couples counseling we’d had from the Ministry of the Third Millennium before we’d gotten married—and heard repeated in a hundred sermons and at Christian couples workshops. And it had worked. It was something Gwen believed and that I had learned to believe, and it worked. We were happy.
“This is bigger than us,” she said. “This is not just a clash of civilizations. It’s a war for civilization.”
I got angry. The talker inside me was ready to say to her, ‘Oh, you better not start this shit now. There’s a woman right across town who wants to jump my bones in ways you’ve never even dreamed of, wants to rock me and roll me all night long. Don’t pull this shit now.’ Then I realized it was the devil talking. The devil finding a wedge—anger, dissatisfaction, lust, any weakness.
“God made the man the head of the family,” I said.
“He didn’t say you didn’t have to listen to me,” she snapped back.
“Listen to you?” Did she mean obey her?
“I meant, didn’t have to listen to my concerns, to my thoughts.”
“I guess not, but not now, alright?”
“When, Carl?”
“I don’t know when. I’ve been working all day, a long day. It was a twelve-, thirteen-hour day and traffic was terrible . . . I don’t have to make excuses. I don’t want to make excuses. It’s my call, and I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s my business, and I said so, and I’m in charge.” All damn day, you go out and play it the best you can and question yourself: Did I do it right? Did I do it the best way possible. And your employers question you: Could you get more? Why did it cost so much? And the people you’re trying to ask questions of, they don’t want to answer; they challenge your right to know, and people hold back records and tell tall tales. So when you go home, you don’t want to answer more questions. You want peace, refuge, support, solace. And to give the same in return.
Gwen was both hurt and furious. She froze there. I wasn’t sure if she was going to get her gun or start to cry. Then her eyes welled up.
Which made me angry. A woman’s weapon. I was supposed to feel guilty for saying what I’m supposed to say, what the Bible says, that I’m in charge? I was supposed to feel bad because I didn’t want to talk about what she wanted to talk about when she wanted it? Anger—anger was the devil’s trick. There is righteous anger, and there is a place for it. But anger between husband and wife, that’s one of the devil’s tools to work against God’s way.
I took a deep breath. I said, “Let’s pray together.”
“Yes, of course,” Gwen said.
“I will pray to control my anger,” I said.
“I will pray to find ways to . . . talk to you without defying you.”
The thing about prayer is that just by making the decision to do it, you’re more than halfway there.
11
“That’s a nice plant,” Esther Rabinowitz, the philosophy department secretary said.
“Glad you like it.”
“So, why’d you bring me a plant?” She looked to be of retirement age or a few years past it, but alert and feisty. “What do you want?”
“I came by yesterday, and you were out and I looked around and thought, this office could use a plant.”
“You’re right. I had a plant. But it died.”
“They do that.”
“People do it too,” she said.
“Yes, they do.”
“We say things like that here in the philosophy department, even the secretary. We’re deep here.”
“I believe you are.”
“But you do want something, don’t you?”
“That’s true too.”
“That’s what we’re all about, here in the philosophy department: truth!”
“Is that the department motto?”
“No, but it should be, don’t you think? I think the department should have a motto. And maybe more parties. They need to recruit. It’s a dying business, philosophy.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“So, what do you want, young man?”
“I want to take you to lunch.”
“Me? I’m more than a quarter-century older than you. I know that anything goes nowadays, but this is more than I expected.”
“Mrs. Rabinowitz, I don’t know that I could keep up with you.”
“I bet you could. But meantime, what do you really want?”
“To take you to lunch.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And talk to you about the department.”
“You mean about poor Nathaniel.”
“Yes.”
“You a reporter?”
“No. No, I’m not.”
“Who are you then?”
“I’m an investigator,” I said. “I’m working for Ahmad Nazami’s defense.”
“Show me. You got ID?”
“Yes. I do,” I said and showed her my PI license.
“Okay, what’s your name again? Carl?”
“Yes. Carl.”
“You can take me to lunch, and you can call me Esther. It was nice, bringing me the plant. Nathaniel always used to bring me chocolates. For my birthday. He always got the date wrong, but he always brought them. Really, really good ones. You could put on five pounds just holding the box.”
“Nate was my favorite,” she said over a bowl of pea soup.
“Why’s that?”
“At least you could understand him. These others . . . listen, do you know philosophy?” She was spooning the chunks of ham out of the bowl.
“Are you doing that because you’re kosher?”
“Nah, I’m a vegetarian.”
“Oh,” I said.
“But not a religious one. I don’t mind a little meat should touch my food, infuse it with flavor. Thomas Jefferson was like that. I just do it for my health. I want to live forever. I have grandchildren. You want to see pictures?”
“Of course,” I said.
She took a packet of photos out of her pocket book. “My daughter-in-law, an angel, e-mails me pictures every day.” I accepted them and made the appropriate cooing sounds of admiration. “I print them out myself,” she explained. “Sometimes I Photoshop them, improve them a little.”
“How adorable,” I said. “So, tell me about Nate.”
“Oh, oh, oh, poor Nathaniel. What a nice man. So much fun. We used to laugh. Who would want to kill such a man. Hah! As if I didn’t know.”
“Like who?”
“Don’t be so quick Mr. Investigator, Carl. I use it as a turn of phrase. In the circumstances, I shouldn’t.”
“What about Ahmad?”
“Ahmad? Kill somebody? Why do you think I’m sitting here talking to you? If I thought it was Ahmad, I would say, Go away. Leave me alone. They got the killer.”
“Not Ahmad, then?”
“No. No, he
and Nate were friends. Oh, how they used to argue.”
“They argued? But you said they were friends.”
“Oh, goyim. What are you, Irish?”
“No.”
“My late husband was Irish. Nice man. But his idea of an argument was to step outside and start punching someone. Argue, like philosophers. For them, that’s like the joy of sex. For most of them. But there are some, they get so serious . . . factions, worse than Trotskyites. You don’t know philosophy, do you?”
“No.”
“Nobody does. I’ll give you a quick overview from the perspective of the departmental secretary and a grandmother who had a very fine education herself at the City College of New York, back when it was one of the best schools in the country, almost as hard to get into as your Ivy League schools. And it was free. We all think we’ve come so far, but when I was growing up, an education, a fine college education, was free.
“Anyway, there are two main groups. They call themselves continental and analytic. Are you ready? You might want to take notes. This is going to be on the test.
“‘Analytic philosophers want to say only what they can be absolutely, logically certain about. As a result, there’s practically nothing left for them to talk about. Definitely not anything important. The continental style, by contrast, is unconstrained by logic, science, common sense, or even experience. It produces work that seems like nonsense to outsiders. Because it is.’ I’m quoting. That’s Nathaniel’s quick and handy definition.
“You can see, with people who take themselves seriously—and why shouldn’t they; their livelihood depends on it—he could make them very, very angry.”
“So, were they angry?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Who in particular?”
“You want me to name names?”
“Well . . . ”
“I don’t name names . . . but if you were to go talk to everybody in the department and ask if they liked Nathaniel, and they all said yes, they loved him, they adored him, they were his best friends, they would all be lying, except for maybe two of them. All right, three. And, if I were you, I would start at the top.”
Salvation Boulevard Page 5
